Nested Search - How do I use the online search tool to do this in PubMed: "(AuthorLastName AND (Keyword1 OR Keyword2))"

I’m surprised no one has asked this before. I need to keep regular tabs on 400 (!) researchers. Unfortunately, some of them are named Yang or Smith.  It just doesn’t make sense that I would have to pick through a few hundred citations every month when these researchers confine themselves to well-defined areas of study. I should be able to say: “Smith AND ankylosing spondylitis AND vitamin D.”

EndNote X3 limits me to 10 “OR” statements, meaning if I could fit a single researcher on a single line, I could potentially reduce the number of searches I do each month from 400 to 40. I know it’s possible to put together 400 canned searches, but is this really the only option???

Here’s an example search that does not work: [Brillon+AND+[glycemic+OR+cholinergic]] 

I’m sure there’s a way to do this. Any ideas?

Paul Albert

Digital Services Librarian

Welll Cornell Medical Library 

Well, we have asked T&R to have AND, OR, NOT boolean search for single line search in Endnote (see Suggestion board), but current version still doesn’t have it. Also, we have asked regular expression and wild card functions, but those things are also not yet available.

I do what you are doing, pretty much setting up canned search in Pubmed, and save the MEDLINE export text file, then import them using MEDLINE filter. Search “within Endnote using connection file” is somewhat hampered, as you’ve already found out.

You can try the following, note this is only for searching PubMed and it does take two lines:

  1. Set the first field to “All fields” and enter the following without quotes “glycemic+OR+cholinergic”

  2. Set the connector to And and the second field to “Author (Smith, A.B.)” and enter “Billon”

This search should return 3 references.  Having the author information on the first line will produce different results.

I’ll be darned, that does work. Nesting would still be nice, but this is certainly helpful.

thanks,

Paul 

Can the new version of EndNote 20 do Boleean operators

such as 

             Abstract   Brain+OR+Tumor

AND      Author       Smith+OR+Klein

thanks

Marta